For those of you following the Wireless Timing project:
I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this, but thanks to Joe Cyburt’s perseverance, we tried our first “permanent” wireless setup at Weatherly last weekend. By permanent, I don't mean that they are planning to leave the antennas out year round -- instead, there will be brackets installed at the appropriate angle on permanent poles so that all that needs to be done before an event is to install the antenna on the bracket.
I went up the week before the event to test out a few solutions with the local crew. Unfortunately the best solution needed tweaking, and we were down to the wire (no pun intended).
The local Weatherly electric company came through! They not only put in a new pole for us at the finish line that is 40 feet above ground and has a 10 foot extension (we asked for 43 feet or higher), they trimmed the tops of the trees that were in the way. We were confident that the finish line pole was in the correct location, but still had some concerns about the start line.
Weatherly wanted to try to use the poles that support the sign in the start line area, but we have had problems before with this location, even 30 feet above the sign. We thought it was worth a try anyway, since it is a very convenient location, and we were hoping the higher dB antennas that we picked up for Weatherly would make all the difference. Note that our normal location for the start line antenna is before the start line, up the hill at the next intersection (which is about 50 feet higher than the start line).
Our plan was to do final setup and testing Friday morning before the event. So I arrived at Weatherly at 8:30 AM Friday morning, only to discover that while I had brought most of the wireless equipment, I had forgotten to pack all of the timing electronics. Since I live about a 2.5 hour drive away, I spent the next several minutes cursing my stupidity. Luckily for me, John Pitman walked up in the middle of this, and suggested I call Sue Salsburg, who lives a bit south of me and had not yet left for Weatherly.
Sue came thru – she stopped at my house to pick up the missing equipment. She also had to rearrange everything in the Mini to make it all fit. She arrived around 12:00, which left us plenty of time to get things set up. I can't thank Sue enough!
We got back on schedule in the afternoon, and started testing. The finish line pole is perfect, but, as suspected, the start line location was not ideal. Signal strength was on the low side of acceptable. Nelson & I discussed it, and decided to go ahead and try to time the event anyway, with a backup plan that involved setting up the temporary telescoping masts in the normal location.
While we did not have any missed times Sat morning that we can directly attribute to the wireless system, the signal strength was low enough to be a big concern. So Nelson asked that the start line antenna be moved to the normal location. I recruited a couple of group 2 drivers to do this during the last group 1 runs before lunch and during lunch time. Thanks to Tim Murphy, Patty Murphy and Nigel Cass (and Nelson once we broke for lunch), we raised the antenna mast at the regular location (in record time and perfectly aimed – apparently we can all find the finish line by eye!). Signal strength was significantly improved, and the event proceeded without any further issues (timing wise anyway).
The “regular location” was the front yard of home at that intersection. The owners have been very gracious about letting us use their yard in past years, but this year they were having a yard sale, and our normal location was covered with items for sale. Even so, they moved everything out of the way so we could set up the antenna mast and have enough room to guy it off properly. Wow, what an amazing thing to do!
For Fall Weatherly, we plan to use one of the permanent poles for the “start line antenna” that is near the home where we have been raising the mast, and that should solve the signal strength problems. I did promise Joe that I won’t call him for at least a week to allow him to recover
, but we will find the time to take care of this before Fall.
Grace